Khoekhoe
[citation needed] "Khoekhoe" groups include ǀAwakhoen to the west, and ǀKx'abakhoena of South and mid-South Africa, and the Eastern Cape.
[citation needed] Ntu-speaking agriculturalist culture is thought to have entered the region in the 3rd century AD, pushing pastoralists into the Western areas.
[citation needed] The example of the close relation between the ǃUriǁ'aes (High clan), a cattle-keeping population, and the !Uriǁ'aeǀ'ona (High clan children), a more-or-less sedentary forager population (also known as "Strandlopers"), both occupying the area of ǁHuiǃgaeb, shows that the strict distinction between these two lifestyles is unwarranted,[citation needed] as well as the ethnic categories that are derived.
][citation needed] In 1510, at the Battle of Salt River, Francisco de Almeida and fifty of his men were killed and his party was defeated[9][10] by ox-mounted !Uriǁ'aekua ("Goringhaiqua" in Dutch approximate spelling), which was one of the so-called Khoekhoe clans of the area that also included the !Uriǁ'aeǀ'ona ("Goringhaicona", also known as "Strandlopers"), said to be the ancestors of the !Ora nation of today.
This increased, as military conflict with the intensification of the colonial expansion of the United East India Company that began to enclose traditional grazing land for farms.
Over the following century, the Khoe-speaking peoples were steadily driven off their land, resulting in numerous northwards migrations, and the reformulation of many nations and clans, as well as the dissolution of many traditional structures.
According to professors Robert K. Hitchcock and Wayne A. Babchuk, "During the early phases of European colonization, tens of thousands of Khoekhoe and San peoples lost their lives as a result of genocide, murder, physical mistreatment, and disease.
"[11] During an investigation into "bushman hunting" parties and genocidal raids on the San, Louis Anthing commented: "I find now that the transactions are more extensive than did at first appear.
Georg Schmidt, a Moravian Brother from Herrnhut, Saxony, now Germany, founded Genadendal in 1738, which was the first mission station in southern Africa,[13] among the Khoe-speaking peoples in Baviaanskloof in the Riviersonderend Mountains.
[15] By the early 1800s, the remaining Khoe-speakers of the Cape Colony suffered from restricted civil rights and discriminatory laws on land ownership.
Khoekua were known at the time for being very good marksmen, and were often invaluable allies of the Cape Colony in its frontier wars with the neighbouring Xhosa politics.
In the Seventh Frontier War (1846–1847) against the Gcaleka, the Khoekua gunmen from Kat River distinguished themselves under their leader Andries Botha in the assault on the "Amatola fastnesses".
(The young John Molteno, later Prime Minister, led a mixed commando in the assault, and later praised the Khoekua as having more bravery and initiative than most of his white soldiers.
)[16] However, harsh laws were still implemented in the Eastern Cape, to encourage the Khoena to leave their lands in the Kat River region and to work as labourers on white farms.
[18] Thus, the government enacted the Cape franchise in 1853, which decreed that all male citizens meeting a low property test, regardless of colour, had the right to vote and to seek election in Parliament.
[22] As native African people, Khoekhoe and other dark-skinned, indigenous groups were oppressed and subjugated under the white-supremacist Apartheid regime.
While this meant that they were offered a few privileges not given to the population deemed "black" (such as not having to carry a passbook), they were still subject to discrimination, segregation, and other forms of oppression.
Thiǁoab (Tsui'goab in Nama and ǁGamab in Damara mythology) is also believed to be the creator and the guardian of health, while ǁGaunab is primarily an evil being, who causes sickness or death.
A commissioned Grammar and Dictionary of the Zulu Language, published in 1859, put forward the idea of an origin from Egypt that appears to have been popular at the time.
The reasoning for this included the (supposed) distinctive Caucasian elements of the Khoekhoe's appearance, a "wont to worship the moon'", an apparent similarity to the antiquities of Old Egypt, and a "very different language" to their neighbours.
